A self locking enclosure and method of self locking an enclosure which provides an enclosure having a hingedly coupled lid which locks by operation of a latch which allows a first occurrence of the lid in the closed condition and subsequent operation of the lid to the open condition and which locks upon the second occurrence of the lid in the closed condition.
A variety of conventional lock boxes allow a locked access panel to be opened for placement of objects inside the lock box. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 975,455; 1,110,779; or 1,219,360. The lock box is subsequently unlocked and the object placed inside the lock box retrieved by the recipient of the object.
A significant problem with conventional lock boxes can be that the lock box must be unlocked to place the object in the lock box for delivery. This necessitates the person placing the object in the box to have possession of a key, code, combination, signal element, or other information which allows the locked panel to be unlocked for placement of the object in the lock box. One solution to this problem has been the use of a post office boxes or residential lock boxes to which the postal service employee has a form of access means. However, with the increased use of mail order or electronic sales (for example over the Internet) and the increased use of commercial carriers to deliver parcels to residences, many parcels are left in front of the residence outside of any secured area or in an unsecured enclosure.
Despite advances in the art of locked boxes in which objects can be placed, there remains a need for novel embodiments of lockable enclosures which can be opened without having possession of unlocking elements or means to unlock an access panel such as a key, combination, code, signal, or the like to allow placement of an object(s) within the lockable enclosure and then upon subsequent closure self lock.